WeChat eyes empowering global tourism services for outbound Chinese travelers

China's popular social media platform WeChat launched a project Tuesday to work with tourism authorities worldwide to digitalize services to tap the country's growing outbound tourism market.

The platform has teamed up with partners to set up the Welcome with WeChat Alliance to leverage its ecosystem to help participants meet the diversifying demands of Chinese travelers abroad.

The alliance will support members in digitalizing their content and services, offer training on effective practices, and finance innovative solutions.

Li Zhaohui, China director with the German National Tourist Board Beijing Office, said social media is playing an important role in attracting tourists and hoped more Chinese tourists would be drawn to the European country after the service empowerment via the alliance.

WeChat, rolled out by tech giant Tencent in 2011, has become a popular platform for institutions, brands and other entities to engage with followers. The combined monthly active users of WeChat topped 1.15 billion by the end of September.

The launch of the alliance came after WeChat in 2016 initiated WeChat Go, an open collaboration program to help global partners serve Chinese travelers.

China is the world's largest outbound tourism market, with some 150 million overseas trips made last year, up 14.7 percent compared with 2017.